A willow dusk hunts at night, just as the sun is setting. When it finds a potential victim, it looses its droning and charges an opponent who succumbs to its effect, bashing it with a slam attack or grappling it and tossing it into its maw. Creatures who resist the willow dusk’s droning are subjected to its aura of misery attack as long as they remain within 10 feet of the creature. An opponent that falls to Charisma 0 is quickly scooped up by the willow dusk and devoured.

Aura of Misery (Su)

Once every 1d4+1 rounds as a free action, a willow dusk can emit a wave of negative energy that affects all living creatures within 10 feet of it. Creatures within the area take 1d6 points of Charisma damage if they fail a DC 22 Will save. At Charisma 0, a creature collapses into a coma until at least 1 point of Charisma is restored. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Droning (Su)

Once per round as a standard action, a willow dusk can emit a droning sound audible to a range of 100 feet. Creatures within the area that hear it, must succeed on a DC 22 Will save or enter a state of lethargy. Affected creatures cannot move (as if held by a hold monster spell) and have no desire to take any other action or engage in combat (unless attacked first, in which case the lethargy effect is broken). The effects last for a number of rounds equal to the one-half of the willow dusk’s Hit Dice (10 rounds for the typical willow dusk). A willow dusk that attacks a creature affected by this ability gains a +4 bonus on its attack roll. Whether the attack succeeds or fails, the lethargy effect is immediately broken. A creature who succeeds on his Will save is unaffected by the droning from that same willow dusk for 24 hours. This is a mind-affecting effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

ECOLOGY

Environment temperate forestsOrganization solitaryTreasure incidental

Willow dusks are nocturnal predators that drone their targets into a lethargic state or a coma-induced sleep before relentlessly attacking and devouring them. To the untrained eye, a willow dusk appears as a normal willow tree and nothing more. Any creature with 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (nature) or Survival can detect “something’s not quite right about that tree” on a successful DC 20 check.

A willow dusk prefers to devours a victim whole, scooping it up in its massive branches and dumping it fully into its gaping maw where its stomach acids digest its swallowed prey. Willow dusks prefer warmblooded creatures to cold-blooded creatures and always eat freshly killed prey. They are not scavengers and will not eat something they didn’t kill (or at least something that has been dead longer than 1 hour).

A willow dusk appears as a 20-foot tall willow tree and can grow to a height of 40 feet or more. A typical willow dusk is 20 feet tall and weighs 900 pounds.

Occasionally, willow dusks have been known to aid evil-aligned druids and rangers.